Winter Thinks Team Is Warming to Task

He’s six decades into a basketball career and Tex Winter admits he is perplexed, seeing as 19 losses in two months have so closely followed an NBA title, particularly when nearly every face in the locker room is familiar.

Asked if the sudden turbulence reminds him of the season in Chicago when Michael Jordan left to play baseball, Winter said not at all, that “We had 55 wins when Michael wasn’t with us.”

He’d just pushed open the door of his place in Hemet, “my little retreat,” he calls it, when the telephone rang with more questions about the Lakers and stopping the losing and running the offense.

He said he’s actually feeling more optimistic lately, that he’s seeing signs of progress in places. Still, there are gaps of execution and conscience, and into them has fallen nearly two months of games, and now their fans are calculating how many wins it would take to simply make the playoffs, of all indignities.

Winter will be 81 in February. He was dreadfully uncomfortable with the early-November flap surrounding him and Kobe Bryant, who, at 24, has a rather famous restlessness within the triangle offense. So, Winter pads lightly around the subject of the Bryant-triangle love-hate relationship, stating clearly that the Lakers are not losing because of Bryant, then just as clearly that the Lakers probably can’t win without a resolution between the two.

“Kobe, of course, is a very impulsive young man,” Winter said. “He wants to be the best that there is in the game and he has those kinds of skills, physically. But it’s also a mental game. You have to play a smart basketball game and utilize your teammates. You can’t do it all on your own, as good as you might think you are.

“I think he’s doing what he thinks he needs to do to help the team win. But sometimes it’s not an accurate analysis on his part.”

Winter then gets started on the list of maladies roster-wide, from missed jumpers to Shaquille O’Neal’s toe surgery, defensive complacency to unclaimed loose balls. He has been through them so often in his head it sounds as if he’s reading them, sighing at the end.

“I just don’t think there’s been the commitment from this ballclub yet to do what has to be done to become the club they’re capable of being,” he said. “The situation has gotten pretty urgent for them, and they’re starting to realize that they’ve got to pick up their intensity. They can’t continue to play the way they did in that earlier stretch. I think they know that. It’s mostly a matter of commitment.”

It worked six months ago. It worked three days ago. But, often enough, it hasn’t.

“They’re just not executing it well,” Winter said. “That’s what I say about commitment. They have to make a commitment to play together as a team offensively so they can be a sound ballclub. That will help them defensively. They have to be willing to work hard defensively and rebound, all the things it takes to win. They haven’t been that committed in my mind.”

Telephone calls to Winter often become charming conversations about coaching and old-school philosophies. He said Tuesday that when Jordan walked away for the first time almost 10 years ago, 11 guys suddenly became very receptive.

“In coaching, there’s a law of readiness,” he said. “It’s the first law of teaching and learning. If the players are ready to learn, then it’s an easy job. If they’re not, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it.”

The Lakers, after three consecutive titles and with most of the same players returning, perhaps were not as eager to be taught.

“I think there’s a lot of them feeling like they can just go through the motions and get the job done,” he said. “It’s just not going to happen.”